One and a half million+ Latinos live in NY's Long Island…from Long Island City to Montauk; 450K are residents of Nassau and Suffolk counties.

2/12/08

Moving Out - Moving In

A record eight million Americans -- some 20,000 people every day -- relocated to another state last year.

So where are these families headed and why?

According to the WSJ article States of Opportunity, Americans continued leaving the Northeast and Midwest for the South and the West. Not much new there in terms of general trends. But what this data doesn't capture is the in-migration to Long Island--which is huge.

Clearly, a chunk of the movers are Long Islanders, including young people beginning new careers, retirees looking for warmer weather and financially distressed families looking for a new start.

What's interesting about Long Island, which is not as true for Upstate New York, is that most of those migrating South are being replaced by those migrating East from Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn as well as those arriving from abroad.

For example, Nassau County alone saw its Latino population more than double between 1990 and 2006 (77,386 to 160,405). During that same period Nassau saw its foreign-born population increase more than four-fold (52,106 to 237,293).

Expect these trends to continue and even accelerate as more Long Islanders retire and younger families, spurred by dropping prices and low interest rates, seek the greener pastures of Long Island.